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We’re better off than we were 4 years ago

Listing the president’s accomplishments will answer these two questions: Are we better off than we were four years ago? And what is the biggest contrast between him and Mr. Romney.

Four years ago our soldiers were dying and being maimed at an alarming rate in two wars. War is the worst thing that a nation can endure because of its cost in blood and treasure. And the subject of war shows the sharpest contrast between these two men.

The president has ended one war and he is going to end the war in Afghanistan in 2014 (this is the longest war in our history). When I listen to Romney/Ryan, I hear echoes of the Bush war years. I get the feeling that Romney, like Bush, thinks he can be “boss of the world.”

Seven thousand five hundred of our soldiers died in these two wars. More than 30,000 were wounded in Iraq alone, many maimed for life. One hundred nine thousand people were killed just in the Iraq war (66,000 of them were civilians).

Bush/Cheney fell into Bin Laden’s trap to build hate against America. Every person we killed (especially civilians) became a recruitment tool. Romney/Ryan’s tough talk sounds exactly like Bush’s, and they’ll repeat the mistakes of war on borrowed money and unprecedented tax cuts during a time of war.

Here are just a few of the president’s other accomplishments:

Four years ago our nation was on the verge of the second great depression. About 800,000 jobs were being lost every month. For 31 months now we’ve added jobs. The auto, construction and banking industries were all failing. Home values were falling like a rock. Wall Street was rampant with corruption and risky behavior. Health insurance companies had free rein to mistreat policy holders. Big bank middle men were charging exorbitant fees for guaranteed student loans. Our future looked bleak.

We are much better off than we were four years ago and this president will make progress on our nation’s other problems as he has on those I’ve mentioned. A return to Republican interventionism and a trickle-down economy threatens to erase the accomplishments of the last four years. Because of the president’s policies, Bin Laden is dead, we are holding our own against a worldwide economic slump and we are waking up from our long national nightmare. Now is not the time to gamble on an unknown quantity that seems to echo the nightmare.